Key Battles Of World War 1_Special Announcment - Sources Used for WW1 Series
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Sep 24, 2023•3 min
Key Battles of World War One
World War One is the watershed moment in modern history. The Western World before it was one of aristocrats, empires, colonies, and optimism for a future of unending progress. After four years of hellish trench warfare, shell fire, 10 million combat deaths, and another 10 million civilian deaths, the world that emerged in 1918 was irrevocably changed. Nation-states came out of the rubble, along with a push for universal rights. New technologies emerged, such as tanks and fighter planes. But something was lost permanently in the Great War: a sense of optimism in mankind. In this series, history professors Scott Rank and James Early look at the 10 key battles that determined the outcome of the war between the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire) and the Allies (Britain, France, Russia, United States).
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Episodes
Introducing James Early's New Podcast "Key Battles of American History"
Did you enjoy this series? Then you'll love James Early's new show "Key Battles of American History." Check it out on the podcast player of your choice or go to keybattlesofamericanhistory.com. Listen here to a snippet of his episode where he and a guest discuss the World War One movie "All Quiet on the Western Front." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Feb 26, 2021•21 min
24: The Eternal Legacy of the First World War
World War One was the most consequential social event in centuries. 10 million soldiers died, creating 3 million widows and 10 million orphans. Many Europeans felt disillusionment and even anger about the war. They questioned earlier notions of honor, duty, and bravery. Europe lost its economic centrality. New York replaced London as the financial capital of the world., and the US and the USSR emerged as proto-superpowers. But positive changes happened. The notion of what roles women could take ...
Dec 31, 2020•56 min
23: The Sad Afterlives of WW1's Leaders: The Humbling (and Exiling) of Generals, Emperors, and Sultans
From 1914-1918, the leaders of World War One were generals who commanded millions of men, emperors who inherited dynasties with centuries of accumulated wealth, and Sultans who claimed a direct line of connection to the Prophet Muhammed. After the war, many of them lost all their money and power and were forced into lonely exile. British Chief of Staff Henry Wilson left the army after the war and became a Member of Parliament. He was murdered on his doorstep by the Irish Republican Army in 1922....
Dec 30, 2020•52 min
22: The 1919 Paris Peace Conference Laid The First Bricks of the Road to World War Two
The Paris Peace Conference opened on January 18, 1919. Its task was the writing of five separate peace treaties with the defeated separate powers: Germany, Turkey, Bulgaria, Austria, and Hungary (now separate nations). The defeated Central Powers were not allowed to participate in the negotiations. The terms would be dictated to them. Russia was also not allowed to come. The world had been remade. Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Wilson faced a daunting task. Even as they and all the other delegate...
Dec 29, 2020•45 min
21: WW1 Ends with Armistice -- The Moment of Silence That Sounded Like the Voice of God
After Germany's' failed spring offensive, realized the only way to win was to push into France before the United States fully deployed its resources. The French and British were barely hanging on in 1918. By 1918, French reserves of military-aged recruits were literally a state secret; there were so few of them still alive. The British, barely maintaining 62 divisions on the Western Front, planned, in the course of 1918 – had the Americans not appeared – to reduce their divisions to thirty or fe...
Dec 28, 2020•51 min
20: The 1918 Battle of Meggido Shattered the Ottoman Empire and Created the Modern Middle East
The Battle of Megiddo was the climactic battle of the Sinai and Palestine campaign of the First World War, with Germans and Ottomans on one side, and British and French forces on the other (with Arab nationalists led by T.E. Lawrence). The actions immediately after it were a disaster for the Ottomans. They now had permanently lost control over their Middle Eastern possessions. Historian Edward Erickson writes “The battle…ranks with Ludendorff's Black Days of the German Army in the effect that it...
Dec 27, 2020•39 min
19: The Empire Strikes Back -- Germany's Final Push to Win WW1 in Spring 1918
Many thought that Germany was capable of winning World War One until the very end. Unlike World War 2, in which the Allies believed that victory was inevitable as early as 1943, this was not the case with the Great War. It is also easy to assume that German defeat was inevitable at the hands of an Allied coalition richer in manpower, weapons and money. Yet Germany nearly captured Paris in 1914, crushed Serbia and Romania, bled the French Army until it mutinied, drove Russia out of the war, and t...
Dec 26, 2020•44 min
18: Tank Warfare--How Military Tech Took a Quantum Leap at the Battle of Cambrai (1917)
The British developed the tank in response to the trench warfare of World War I. In 1914, a British army colonel named Ernest Swinton and William Hankey, secretary of the Committee for Imperial Defense, championed the idea of an armored vehicle with conveyor-belt-like tracks over its wheels that could break through enemy lines and traverse difficult territory. The men appealed to British navy minister Winston Churchill, who believed in the concept of a “land boat” and organized a Landships Commi...
Dec 25, 2020•22 min
17: The Yanks Are Coming -- America Enters World War One
Most Americans are indifferent about the nation's involvement in World War One (under half say the U.S. had a responsibility to fight in the war; one-in-five say it didn't). Many figure it entered the conflict too late to claim much credit, or intervention was discreditable. Some say the U.S. had no compelling national interest to enter the Great War; worse, U.S. intervention allowed Britain and France to force on Germany an unjust, punitive peace that made the rise of Adolf Hitler’s National So...
Dec 24, 2020•51 min
16: The Slog of War -- the Passchendaele Campaign of 1917
The best way to describe the Third Ypres (Passchendaele) Campaign of 1917. It’s ‘slog.’ When you think about a drudging act that seems to accomplish nothing, this battle is it. Mud. Mud to your waist. Everything sinks down several feet into mud. Tanks, Cars, guns, horses, everything stuck in mud. Images of a battlefield landscape with pockmarked holes and mist rising from the plains with shattered trees is characterized by the third battle of Ypres. The battle took place on the Western Front fro...
Dec 23, 2020•37 min
15: The Russian Revolutions of 1917-1923--A Bigger Threat Than the Kaiser?
We’ve looked at many battles in this series, but we’ve only tangentially touched on how this war fundamentally altered European society. The Great War is the watershed between the pre-modern and early modern era. As an example, all we have to do is look at Russia. Before World War One, it was an autocracy, very conservative, very religious, and only a few decades away from serfdom, which the rest of Europe abandoned in the Middle Ages. After the war, it was officially atheistic, communist, rapid...
Dec 22, 2020•43 min
14: Why WW1 Was the Graveyard of Empires (Russian, Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian)
World War One shattered the empires of Russia, the Ottomans, and the Austro-Hungarians, which had all existed in one form or another for centuries. That's because it broke the fragile alliances that kept these Empires alive. In this episode, we explore the Southern Fronts of World War One in 1916-1917. Starting with Italy, since Italy’s entry into the war, Italy and Austria had fought several battles along their border in the Alps. Neither side was able to make headway until May 1916, when Austr...
Dec 21, 2020•45 min
13: The Battle of the Somme Caused 1 Million Casualties But Was a Turning Point for WW1
The 1916 Battle of the Somme caused a total of 1 million casualties on all sides. the total is over a million casualties. The Allies had gained very little ground. At the end of the battle, they had gained only 7 miles and were still about 3 miles short of their goal from the first day of the war. The Somme, along with Verdun and the Brusilov Offensive, were among the bloodiest in world history up to that point. According to John Keegan, the Battle of the Somme was the greatest British tragedy o...
Dec 20, 2020•46 min
12: The Flying Aces of World War One
Since the first successful flight of an airplane, people had imagined and dreamed of airplanes being used for combat. H. G. Wells's 1908 book (The War in the Air was an example. When World War One broke out, there were only about 1000 planes on all sides. Planes were very basic. Cockpits were open, instruments were rudimentary, and there were no navigational aids. Pilots had to use maps, which were not always reliable. Getting lost was common. Sometimes pilots had to land and ask directions! At ...
Dec 19, 2020•42 min
11: The Brusilov Offensive: Russia's Mortal Blow to Austria-Hungary
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Dec 18, 2020•30 min
10: WW1 At Sea: The Battle of Jutland (1916)
Although overlooked today, the war at sea was a crucial part of World War I overall. The German use of the Unrestricted Submarine Warfare (in which non-military ships could be blown up by submarines without the latter surfacing, making it impossible for innocent men, women, and children to abandon ship) against commerce not only threatened the Allied war effort, but also drew the United States into the conflict. In addition, the British economic blockade of Germany afforded by the Royal Navy’s c...
Dec 17, 2020•55 min
9: Verdun - The 299-Day Battle That Killed 300K Soldiers And Still Scars The Earth With Unexploded Shells
The Battle of Verdun--fought from February 21-December 18 1916 in the Western Front of France--was horrifying and hellish even by the standards of World War One. Over a 299-day-period, there were 1 million total casualties. The French were bled white, but so were the Germans. Of these, 300,000 were killed, which is about 1 death for every minute of the battle. The French most likely lost slightly more than the Germans. About 10% of all French war dead were from Verdun. Half of Frenchmen between ...
Dec 16, 2020•48 min
8: How 1915 Became World War One's Year of Poison Gas, Genocide, and Millions of Refugees
In 1915, the Central Powers and Allies dug in their heels and tried desperately to break the stalemate of the war, still hoping for a short conflict on the scale of a few months. Poison gas was used for the first time. Germans experimented with flamethrowers and armored shields, while the French began using hand grenades. In April, Germans began the Second Battle of Ypres and used 168 tons of chlorine gas. On the Eastern Front, Austria launched three offensives against Russian forces in the Carp...
Dec 15, 2020•43 min
7: The Battle of Gallipoli (1915) How Ataturk and the Ottomans Hurled the Allies (Including Winston Churchill) Into the Sea
The Allies desperately wanted to take control of the Dardanelles (the straights connecting Constantinople with the Mediterranean). They were crucial to Russia and would make it possible for Russia to (in effect) have a warm-water port. The only problem is the Ottomans had controlled the Dardanelles for five centuries and were backed by Germany and the rest of the Central Powers. The Allies wanted to open the Dardanelles, open a second front against Austria, take Constantinople, and knock the Ott...
Dec 14, 2020•46 min
6: World War 1 Trenches Were A Labyrinth of Rats, Disease, Decaying Flesh, and the Omnipresent Threat of Death
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Dec 13, 2020•48 min
5: The Average WW1 Soldier Was a 110-Pound Villager Who Suffered Disease, Hunger, and PTSD
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Dec 12, 2020•49 min
4: Germany's Plans For Total French Defeat in 1914 Failed at the Battle of the Marne
The beginning of World War One was marked the breakdown of the western powers’ war plans. Leaders on both sides experienced surprises, shocks, and the failure of plans. The first few months saw shocking violence on a scale never experienced before, at least not in Western Europe. During the first few months of the war, an average of 15,000 lives were lost each day. (five times as much as the worst day in the Civil War). This happened at the Battle of the Marne, fought from September 6 to 12 in 1...
Dec 11, 2020•1 hr
3: Germany So Completely Annihilated Russia At the WW1 Battle of Tannenberg That A Russian General Committed Suicide
The Battle of Tannenberg was the first major battle of World War One, fought between Germany and Russia, who surprised everyone with its fast mobilization. This muddled the plans of Germany, which sought to quickly fight a two-front war against France and Russia, knock France out of the war, then focus its resources on Russia. The plan didn't work, but Germany issued a crushing blow against Russia, largely due to its fast rail movements that allowed it to focus on two Russian armies at once (and...
Dec 10, 2020•50 min
2: Europe's Pre-WW1 Alliances Were a Doomsday Machine That Pulled the Entire Continent Into War
An impossibly complex web of alliances that maintained a fragile peace in Europe (and surprisingly held it together since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815) always threatened to unravel. The 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne, by Serbian nationalists, made Austria declare war on Serbia. A doomsday machine kicked into gear: Russia mobilized against Austria. Germany mobilized against Russia. France mobilized against Germany. Germany prepared long-h...
Dec 09, 2020•49 min
1: Europe in 1914 Had Absolutely No Idea They Were About To Enter The Most Hellish War Ever
World War One is the watershed moment in modern history. The Western World before it was one of aristocrats, empires, colonies, and optimism for a future of unending progress. After four years of hellish trench warfare, shell fire, 10 million combat deaths, and another 10 million civilian deaths, the world that emerged in 1918 was irrevocably changed. Nation-states came out of the rubble, along with a push for universal rights. New technologies emerged, such as tanks and fighter planes. But some...
Oct 02, 2020•53 min
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